Access+Health+Center

In January of 2001, 18-year-old Melissa Heim went to Access Health Center in Downers Grove, Illinois.She was given "twilight anesthesia" with a drug cocktail including Versed, Fentanyl, and Brevital for an abortion, which started at about 11:45 a.m. and was finished at about noon.

After the abortion, she was moved to the recovery area, where she went into cardio-respiratory arrest about half an hour later. An ambulance was summoned, and Melissa was resuscitated by the paramedics, but due to the brain injury she had suffered, she died on the 26th.

Her survivors, parents Patricia Allvin and Mark Heim, brother Joshua Heim and sister Kathleen Allvin, filed suit against Access, doctors Victor Espinosa and Alfonso Del Granado, and nurse Pat Hurt, holding that they had failed to monitor her properly in recovery and failed to resuscitate her quickly enough to save her life.